Nikon D600, Sigma 12-24mm, ISO 100, 12mm, f/5.6, 1/320

The crop was almost ready for harvesting when I shot this shot. I was at the exact same location, Salvad Park, a few months earlier, but then everything was green – much too green, but I did like the location, so I made a mental note of it. Actually I did shoot the scene and hoped it would, turn out ok, but of cause it didn’t. Just too green.

This shot is an HDR photo, shot with my Nikon D600 and my newest wide angle lens Sigma 12-24mm, which I love. It’s a shot straight into the sun. Had I used my Nikon D800 I would have tried to avoid the sun to blow out, which is really difficult, because the sun is so bright. But recently I have come to the conclusion, that somehow the eye accepts that the sun is blown out, because you can’t look at the sun with the naked eye anyway. If you look at other photos the sun is often blown out and that is really OK. What I did do, though, was make an exposure compensation of -2/3, and instead of getting -2, 0, 2, I got some awkward exposures -2 2/3, -2/3 and then 1 1/3. But that made more of the sky come out right.

The photo is processed in Photomatix Pro, as well as in Lightroom. It was a bit windy, so I had to use only one exposure for the crop that is closest, otherwise it would be ghosted. This exposure I did in Lightroom and made it mix nicely with the rest of the HDR. I used layered masks in Photoshop to mix the images.

This is the original image: